Grantham Museum is launching a search to identify the unknown women of Grantham’s suffrage movement.
Do you recognise these women? Do you have a relative in your past connected
to the Women’s Suffrage Movement? Can you help Grantham Museum identify the ladies of the Grantham Suffragist group?
Working with national organisation HerVote100, the museum has set up a research group called Suffrage Sisters to investigate and identify the women of the Grantham branch of the NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), and to highlight the town’s part in winning the vote. Anyone can join as a Suffrage Sister volunteer — there are no fees and no experience is needed.
What the museum knows so far: Grantham was predominantly a suffragist (non-militant) community. Records from the British Newspaper Archive show that NUWSS meetings were held at Victoria Street Hall and Westgate Hall, with the first meeting in September or October 1911. Millicent Fawcett, leader of the NUWSS, visited the Grantham branch on 23 November 1911 to speak at a meeting.
Names gathered so far include Winifred Poole Berry, Mrs Boggis, Dora Grace Bothamley, Dorothy Cafferata, E C Clarke, Mrs Dickinson, Mrs Docker, Mrs Drake, Sarah Grummitt (of Green Hill, a teacher), Mrs Hancock, Gertrude Hardwick, Florence Annie Hodson (of Houghton Road), Ellen Jessie Houghton, Doris Hutchinson, Cecily Hutchinson (all of St Peters Hill), Beatrice and Mary Kate Kingston (of Beatgate, milliners and dressmakers), Mrs Large, Mrs Lewis, Alice Mary and Roberta Marion Lynn (Church Street), Ada McVie (Harrowby Road), Martha Ann Medlock (Church Trees), Susanna and Gladys Monk (Westgate, music student), Mrs Phipps, Mrs Potts, Mrs Rear, Mrs Reis (Claythorpe Hall), Katherine Yeoward Roebotham (Fernside, St Peters Hill), Mrs Rowle, Florence Mary Snowden, Miss Snowden, Agnes Sarah Taunt (Castlegate, elementary school teacher), Editha Lamorna Moresby White (Avenue), Mrs Wilkinson, Henrietta Gladys Williams (Harrowby House, headmistress) and Miss Wilson.
Suffrage Sisters is one of several projects run by HerVote100, which is supporting events across the country to mark the centenary of the Equal Franchise Act in 2028 — the act that finally gave all women the right to vote on the same terms as men. HerVote100 works with organisations, groups and individuals at national, regional and local level, helping to facilitate events and commemorations of the women who fought for, and won, the vote, with the aim of building a lasting legacy that recognises the thousands of women across the country involved.
Rebecca Chantry-Parke (Grantham Museum volunteer and HerVote100 committee member) and Hannah Tomlinson (heritage and museum consultant) are co-leading the local Suffrage Sisters research group. The museum also has an exhibition underway on the life of Mary Ann Rawle, a suffragette, suffragist and founder of the local Old Age Pensioners Association.
An initial research group meeting for anyone interested in getting involved will take place at 7pm on Tuesday 8 September at Grantham Museum.
Anyone with information about the women in the photograph, the names listed, or who would like to join the Suffrage Sisters research group, can email Hannah or Becky at info@granthammuseum.org.uk for a sign-up form, or call in at the museum (Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10am–4pm) to collect one.
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